Starbucks barista mansplains healthy pregnancy to mom-to-be customer, gets spot-on response from female bystander

Pregnancy brings along a lot of cravings. Sometimes women carrying a child want to snack on savoury edibles or they want to eat some fast food. On the other hand, coffee enthusiasts are happy with their daily cup of caffeine. But there are individuals out there and a vast majority of them being men, who feel the necessity to tell a pregnant woman what she should or should not have while carrying a child. Comedian and actress Tiffany Stevenson, @tiffstevenson on X, took to the online community to post her experience of witnessing a pregnant woman getting schooled by a male barista at Starbucks and how Stevenson got involved in the exchange between them.

"Unbelievable bit of womb bothering in Starbucks at services," Stevenson wrote in her post. " A pregnant woman got her Caramel Macchiato and the guy behind the counter said, ‘Oh, it’s for you. Do you want me to make a decaf?’ She said, ‘No, thanks.'" However, the barista was desperate to make a point by showing concern for her unborn child and mentioned that "caffeine is not good for the baby." Stevenson revealed that the pregnant woman brushed off that comment from the barista and said that she has one cup of coffee every day.

But the barista did not stop at that and started mansplaining how a pregnant woman shouldn't have coffee. That's when Stevenson lost it while observing the exchange between the lady and the barista. She snapped at the barista almost immediately, "'Are you a man telling a woman what she should and shouldn’t have during a pregnancy?'" She added, "Then he says, ‘Oh just because it’s bad for the baby so that’s why I’m saying it.'" She mentioned how she finally told the barista to "stop it" even though he continued to justify policing a stranger for 5 minutes. 

"He was maybe 30 years old max. Are they also doing OB/GYN training at Starbucks these days?" Stevenson wondered. The post started an important conversation in the comment section about whether or not the barista was right to mansplain the pregnant lady. @CEisenhart recalled, "A man once asked me to leave a gym sauna as it’s ‘not good for the baby’. I wasn’t pregnant. Utterly humiliated in a swimsuit in public - awesome! Wish I had come up with a scathing reply rather than crying for days. It was quite an eye-opener to me that a complete stranger and man felt he knew better than me what was best for me and my (nonexistent) unborn child! Amazing arrogance."

@MagsDeakin wondered, "Is it just because he was a man that you were offended or would it have been the same reaction if it had been a woman? I’m genuinely interested. I guess the context is important but not everyone knows caffeine isn’t recommended in pregnancy so maybe he was trying to help?" Stevenson replied to this comment and wrote, "He presumes he knows that info over a heavily pregnant woman? He can say, ‘Did you want caffeine.’ Not give his endless thoughts and opinions. Then try to justify it to me after I’ve told him to stop it. It would also be annoying if a woman did it." @brian_p_k joked, "How on earth does he think babies survived pre-1990s when women smoked, ate and drank whatever they liked throughout pregnancy?"